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This week Franciscan Media is launching “Advent with St. Teresa of Calcutta,” and so I’m reposting one of my favorite Advent traditions here, to give you some extra tips and tricks on how to create your very own Gingerbread House for Advent. This originally appeared on my original blog, “Extraordinary Moms Network.” Enjoy!

On the Friday after Thanksgiving each year, we get started. (The project can be worked on over an entire weekend.) We mix dough, cut out and bake the cookies. The next day we make a batch of royal icing, and assemble the house. (I cheat and use the powdered kind available at my local baking store. You can also get it on Amazon.) The decorating is typically done the third day, but you can assemble and bake on the same day as long as you give the house time to dry before you start decorating. An excellent video tutorial on how to assemble a simple gingerbread house is available here at “Cookies, Cupcakes, and Cardio.”

You can make your own templates to cut out your cookies from poster board or laminated parchment paper. If you’re not architecturally inclined, you can also buy gingerbread house cookie cutters at a craft store or Amazon (I like the Fox Run Gingerbread House Cookie Cutter Set).

What do you do with your house once it’s done? That’s really up to you. We like to “smash” our house on New Year’s Eve, and enjoy it with hot chocolate or coffee. Some people like to make two houses, and give one to another family or to a favorite teacher. You can also create a little “village” for your mantelpiece or tabletop. Make this tradition your own — the scent is heavenly, and the fun is contagious.

Ready to start baking? Here we go!

Gingerbread House

Each recipe makes one house, with enough to make a few gingerbread men or women for the tree. You will need…

Combine dry ingredients into a bowl; stir and set aside. Cream sugar and shortening. Beat in molasses, egg, and vanilla until smooth. Gradually stir in dry ingredients into the molasses mixture. When it becomes too stiff to stir with spoon, work dough in with hands until completely blended. Divide dough into 4 parts. Shape into a flattened round, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill at least 1 hour and up to 2 weeks. Place a disk of chilled dough on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Cover with waxed paper or more plastic wrap and roll to 1/4-inch thickness. (Paper keeps the dough from sticking, so you don’t need flour for rolling.)

Remove plastic/waxed paper and place templates on dough, leaving 1/2-inch border around pieces. Use a small, sharp knife to cut around pattern edges. Use fingers or knife to remove scrap dough pieces, leaving house pieces intact on the foil. Cut out doors and windows as desired.

Bake at 325 degrees for 10-25 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces. Gingerbread will darken, especially around edges, and feel firm to the touch. While cookies are still warm, put templates back on each piece and trim any extra cookie around the edges (it will expand during the baking process). Cool and peel off foil. Store in a cool, dry place.

To Make the Gingerbread House, You Will Need:

Pre-baked (trimmed and cooled) gingerbread cookies. (You will need at least six pieces: One base, two pointy front and back pieces, two windowed side pieces, two roof pieces.

Foil-covered cardboard. (Should be large and sturdy enough to support not only the house but any surrounding “landscaping” you choose to do.)

A couple of soup cans. (Use them to support the walls while they are drying, and remove before you put on the roof. The YouTube tutorial shows how to do this.)

Royal icing. One batch for each house you are making. When you are not actually using part of the batch, keep the icing covered by a clean, damp paper towel and dishtowel, to keep it from drying out prematurely. You will also need something to “pipe” the frosting (disposable pastry bag or Baggie with the tip clipped off). If you choose to color the icing (I usually don’t), paste gives you bolder colors than liquid food color.

Decorations! It’s really up to you what you choose to use. Tinted coconut for grass (or white for snow), frosted sugar cones for trees, Vanilla wafers for roof shingles, wafer cookies for window shutters, front stoop, benches, or door. M&Ms or pastel mints for brickwork or around garden beds (I often pipe a “tree” or “lattice” onto the back of my house, and use M&M’s for “flowers.”) Red hots and sprinkles to decorate the tops of roofs and trees. Let your imagination go wild!

To construct house, pipe or spread royal icing on the front, side, back, and other side walls (in that order), both on the bottom of each cookie and the side where it will adhere to the pieces that are already in place on the foil-lined cardboard. Once you have all four pieces in place, let rest at least 30 minutes before you place roof cookies on top. Once the roof pieces are in place, allow to dry completely (even overnight) before decorating.iv>

Good morning, Nebraska! Special thanks to Bruce McGregor and Jen Brown at “Spirit Mornings” who invited me to talk with them at 9:40 this morning about … you guessed it! … Advent with Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

For those who are unemployed or self-employed, figuring out how to spend time wisely can be a real challenge. There is always more to do than time to do it. And so, last week when my friend Jennifer Fulwiler had an online “web event” to launch the paperback edition of her memoir “Something Other Than God, I logged on and asked Jen how she manages to do everything she does: She homeschools her kids, hosts her own radio show, writes books and keynotes at practically every major Catholic gathering across the country.

Her two-word response was deceptively simple: prioritize ruthlessly. “When I wanted to write a book, I had to set aside everything else except my family. I couldn’t attend every church function or do the other things I wanted to do, because there wasn’t time. I had to prioritize ruthlessly to get it done.”

I knew she was right. Door-testing takes time. Once people heard I was looking for work, I suddenly had a L-O-N-G list of invitations of (unpaid) things well worth doing (and likely couldn’t have done had I still been employed). This weekend, for instance, I helped to host the Franciscan profession of the Immaculate Conception Fraternity here in Mishawaka, whipping up large pans of my signature chicken and rice dish to feed nearly 200 people. I also baked enough gingerbread to make 10 houses with the YDisciple group at church. It was fun, and it got me out of the house. On the other hand, if I got in the habit of doing these kinds of grand-scale projects, what would it do to the job hunt?

This morning I was on Relevant Radio, talking with Kyle Heimann about my new book Advent with Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Servant’s publicity team, Kennedy-Brownrigg, has done a great job of lining up interviews for the book, and so I am talking about Mother Teresa a lot these days. This morning, I got to thinking about how she had to prioritize ruthlessly as well. With thousands of lepers lining the streets of Calcutta, how did she know which ones to help? How did she find the strength to EXPAND her work to other countries, given the level of need right where she was?

I found a nugget of insight in her book One Heart Full of Love, in which she describes what it was like to accept an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the University of Cambridge. At first she protested. “You know full well that I have not studied theology. I just simply try always to live it out.” And yet, ultimately she accepted the honor. Why?

In reality, the event was a gift from God. And it was not just for me personally but for you, for the sisters, and for our poor. We must appreciate and accept it with all humility of heart, so that we can offer it to Jesus. After all, it belongs to him. All glory and honor are his. We must let Jesus use us as he sees fit. In that way, every aspect of our life of prayer, of fundraising, and of feeding and clothing the poor complement each other. They cannot be separated. One cannot be done without the other. None of them can be done without prayer. Your generosity and your sacrifices must be the fruit of your prayer life. (p.67-68).

In good times and bad, the measure of what is to be done is the same: all is the fruit of prayer, done for love of Jesus. The harder tasks keep us humble and trusting. And the “fun” things need not be written off as distractions, so long as we can offer them to God (that keeps the true distractions at bay, such as the big-screen time-suck in the living room). It becomes easier to prioritize when I ask myself not, “What do I want to do today?” but “God, what do YOU want me to do today?”

Excuse me, now. A little angel is calling me to go clean the carpets, a little prelude to the Thanksgiving celebration ahead.